Rit1 Essay 1

The expectancy theory of motivation has three components, each of which must fulfill certain requirements for the employee to feel the motivation necessary to progress to the next component. The components each must meet the needs and expectations of the employee, therefore motivating the employee to progress through the components in order. The components are first the belief that effort will produce results, second that those results will lead to some form of reward, and third that the reward will be worth the effort needed to attain it, in the eyes of the person being rewarded.

The first component requires the employee to believe that any effort required to accomplish the task at hand will produce results. If, like the first group of employees in the example, the employee believes that cannot accomplish the needed results no matter how much effort is given to the task, the results produced will not meet their goals. Because of this, for these employees, the process breaks down immediately. One possible solution to resolve this issue would be to lower the production goals for a given time, allowing those employees that feel their manual dexterity would prevent them from reaching the production goal to get enough repetition to gain speed or possibly find improvements to the new process that would make it easier for those employees to reach the goal. After the initial period is done, the process could be reviewed to see if any improvements can be made, and then production goals could be adjusted to meet the needs of the employees as well as those of the company.

The second component is the relationship between producing results and being rewarded for those results. In our example, some employees have no problem with the new process, but feel that they will gain nothing for meeting their production goals. If their pay increases are not tied to their production goals and everyone gets a similar raise no matter how much they produce, the motivation to...